Gap working on integrating online and high street shopping

Posted on June 3, 2013.

The Gap Inc. is working on bridging the divide between its high street stores and online shopping services, according to bizjournals.com.

The company, which includes brands Old Navy, Banana Republic, Piperlime and Athleta, as well as Gap, is reinvigorating its hardware and application systems to improve the online shopping experience for its customers.

The changes will mean that shoppers can now buy items via online payment, which they can then collect in store, as well as being made aware of in-store deals, according to a new report. It is also hoped that the new developments will make it easier to create programmes to support customers who are purchasing items by mobile devices.

Talking about the developments, GAP CIO, Tom Keisler told blogs.wsj.com: “We needed to take control of our infrastructure to drive out a ton of cost and bring speed to services that was not possible with legacy infrastructure.”

The 43-year old company is set to get new open source software, as well as a new private cloud which will enable the improvements. It is said that these measures will support the increased amount of traffic that Gap is expecting to get from customers visiting the site from a number of devices. The changes are set to be finished by the end of 2014.